Agg
by polar nights
Summary: It was common knowledge in the Abbey of Redwall that you could identify a fox by his greed, a snake by the scales on her back, and a rat by his aversion to baths.
1. Chapter 1

It was common knowledge in the Abbey of Redwall that you could identify a fox by his greed, a snake by the scales on her back, and a rat by his aversion to baths.

Agg the Rat was admitted to the soap-strewn Abbey bathhouse one Friday, eyes watering as though he had just stepped into a dung pile and uttering epithets that would have made even a common sailor blush, except for the fact that he was a common sailor. The Abbot, whose room, due to some odd construction error, had been built adjacent to the bathhouse, was so distracted by the hollering of the rat that he went to stay in the attic with his Auntie Barta for the next month. He was hardly better off there, he told the townspeople with an air of martyrdom, for her newts left shit all over his best habits and stank up her house to high heaven. Barta grew so irritated at his constant complaining that she "accidentally" locked him out of her attic one night and had her favorite dibbun choir sing ditties at maximum volume so she could later claim not to have heard his frantic knocking.

Quite apart from the drama of the Abbot's personal life, the capture of the rat was the talk of the Abbey for weeks. Agg's trial was pushed off for a few weeks, as the hare judge of the Abbey court was on vacation in Salamandastron for some food holiday. (He would not return until his wife, suspecting that he was seeing a mistress, grew fed up with his absence and resolved to drag him home by his various medals of honor, if necessary). However, there was no question about what the verdict would be, since vermin raids had accounted for a number of deaths that fall. The Guosim found one lf their scouting parties' heads one morning, bold as ye may, waving jauntily on a very large and pointy stick, and the mice at St. Ninians had met the same fate later that October. But it was not until Aurel, the daughter of the Abbot, vanished without a trace one night that the woodlanders had actually started taking the vermin threat seriously. (Aurel, incidentally, was found two years later, happily married to the kitchen maid her father had deemed an unsuitable suitor before her disappearance).

Somehow the Skipper had managed to convince the most able-bodied beasts in the Abbey to accompany him into the darkest corner of Mossflower. Using Heffa, the oft drunk Cellarkeeper, as bait (in a stroke of what was either brilliance or – far more likely – plain, dumb luck), they were able to apprehend a rat and incapacitate him using a bucket of clean bathwater – with, the Skipper boasted later, only a few snagged claws (and one dead, drunk hedgehog) as casualties. The relieved Abbot gave Skipper a public congratulations and spent the rest of the time between Agg's capture and trial berating the Skipper for necessitating his stay in the house of a "mad, newt-obsessed old bat" intent on stuffing stale scones down his throat.

"Stay away from the rat," worried mothers told their children, stuffing soap into their shirt pockets as they left for school at the gatehouse. (As soon as they were a block away from home, the embarrassed pupils chucked the soap into the pond, decimating the pomd's already-faltering fish population and nearly jamming the wheel at the moles' mill downstream). These same mothers later gathered around the bathhouse (which was basically a prison, with bars and all that nonesense.) like onlookers in a zoo, exchanging in tight whispers all the past and present vermin lore they had managed to scrounge up from the recesses of their minds.

It was around this time that Fairfax, the devilishly handsome Abbey Champion, chose to emerge from his Martinly room. He strode piously amidst the gossiping mothers and proudly informed them that he would perform an exorcism, which nobody really knew about anyway, Fairfax less than anybeast else.

"Oooh!" the gathering gasped admiringly.

"Yes, ladies," the Champion modestly. "Never fear. This threat will soon be no more!" He rolled up his sleeves (which provoked another round of "Oooh!s from the more romantic females in the crowd), raised the Sword of Martin high above his head, and intoned, "_Deus, venite et purificare monstrus!_"

Nobody was quite sure what Latin was, either, but because of similar plotholes written in the very first Redwall book, everybody ignored the fact that the language had never existed before that moment.

The rat, who had until that point been asleep, opened one eye (the onlookers gasped and leapt backward in terror; one or two ladies even swooned). "Idjit," he said scornfully. "Exorcisms don't work on me. I'm a rat, not a seer." He coughed weakly. "Your Latin is wrong, by the way. It's _'monstrum'_. Direct object and all that." He didn't really how he had gotten so incredibly smart in the last few minutes, not to mention the fact that his accent had disappeared, but all the other beasts in the Abbey were too enthralled in Fairfax's Mary-Sue-ness to care.

"Quiet, foul pestilence!" Fairfax screeched, waving the Sword.

"Fine. Be that way," Agg muttered, and he promptly went back to sleep.

The dibbuns arrived in the wake of the disappointed Champion and fluttery-eyed maids. Having apparently decided to take a break from their regular activities (which generally involved a good deal of food theft and mischief-making), they clustered in front of the bathhouse, taunting the rat from a safe distance and daring each other to touch him. Eventually, they grew bored of this pastime and wandered off to set off firecrackers in front of the Skipper's workout gym instead.

It was not until later that afternoon that the little squirrel appeared. Small and silent, he stood in front of the bathhouse with an air of frank curiosity, watching the rat through innocent gray eyes. He couldn't have been more than eleven seasons, but Agg couldn't be sure because animals are supposed to age differently. Agg pretended to be asleep, but kept glancing periodically through his nearly-closed eyelids, hoping the dibbun would go away.

"You're not fooling me, you know," the squirrel said, the third time this happened. "I know you're awake."

"What's this?" the rat asked, snorting fitfully. "What do you want? Come to throw more stale scones at me?"

"Why would I want to throw a stale scone at you?" the squirrel asked in confusion.

"All the others did," Agg said, gesturing at the smashed scone bits lining the floor. "I'm quite terrifying and dangerous, after all."

The squirrel frowned, a light crease appearing on his forehead. "I don't think you're scary."

Agg smiled wickedly and jumped forward, baring his impressively long canines at the boy. "Rawr!"

It didn't have quite the effect he intended. Far from jumping backward and screaming femininely (as the Abbot had done a few hours earlier when Agg had performed this same trick), the dibbun simply stared at him.

"That was awesome!" he said after a few minutes had elapsed. "Could you do it again?"

Agg's glare was interrupted by a large sneeze caused by a meandering soapbud. "Can't you leave a poor, suffering creature in peace?" he demanded, wiping his streaming eyes. "Don't you have to go to..." he tried to remember what his relatives had told him about humans "...wherever it is woodlander brats go during the day? Drool? School?"

The squirrel frowned and kicked a rock. "I don't go to school."

"Oh." Agg closed his eyes and sniffed, hoping the pesky young'un would take a hint. Unluckily for him, the boy seemed to be in a talkative mood.

"How did you get captured, anyway? I thought rats were supposed to be fast."

Agg opened his eyes again and drew himself up haughtily. "We are."

The dibbun looked at him.

"It wasn't my fault," Agg said plaintively. "It was that damned hedgehog! I knew I should have listened to Grandma Mina when she gave lectures about the evils of buggly cider. That man's wineskin was full of it. I couldn't stand straight, even before they brought out the bathwater." He sneezed pathetically. "Why are you even talking to me? Don't you know better than to consort with evil creatures?"

The squirrel shrugged. "Evil? What, the whole 'I-want-to-eat-your-babies-and-rape-your-maids' thing? You have to eat too, I guess, and you can't rape as many maids as the judge does." He sighed, hugging himself. "I don't like feeling hungry. Mum doesn't find enough food at the nut factory, sometimes. It's awful."

He did look painfully thin for a Redwaller, come to think of it, though Agger really had no experience with these things. Vermin, of course, had a completely different standard for waist size than woodlanders.

"Lucian!"

The dibbun jumped as though stung by a scorpion. A large, irate squirrelwife was bustling toward him, wielding a broom and a very annoyed expression. "What," she intoned, resembling nothing so much as a sentient steam engine on rampage, "are you doing here? I thought I told you to stay away from the rat!"

"I don't think-" Lucian began.

"Don't you have any sense of self-preservation? He'll corrupt your already-corrupted soul!" And with that, she grabbed the young'un by the ear and dragged him away from the bathhouse, chuntering under her breath about ingrates and children who didn't have the sense Martin gave fire-breathing bees. (As a matter of fact, the Abbey had had a problem with those a few years back, when a passing seer dropped some in the gatehouse as a practical joke. The Alidaean pyromaniacs had burnt down a few fences and a n apple tree - not to mention giving the Abbot a hotfoot - before an errant spark had incendiated the beekeepers hives, effectively putting an end to the matter once and for all).

Agg watched the spectacle idly, finally closing his eyes when the young squirrel – Lucian, was it? – was out of sight. Stupid child. Eventually, Agg closed his eyes and shook his head. It was none of his business, after all, and Agg had far more important things to worry about at the moment.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning the little squirrel was back, bearing some colorful wooden boxes and an expression that was far too cheerful for that time of day, in Agg's opinion. (Of course, since rats were nocturnal, nine AM was the rat equivalent of three in the morning, so Agg might have been being a little unfair).

"Not you again," Agg groaned in response to Lucian's quiet "psst." "Didn't your mother tell you to stop consorting with the big, scary rat?"

Lucian didn't seem to have heard. "I brought this for you," he announced proudly, passing the rat a box.

Agg stared at it.

"It's a tissue box," Lucian explained. "You open the top, and, well, tissues come out. I'd have brought you some nightshade too, but we're out, and I don't know if woodlander medicine works on rats.

"So..." he continued, as Agg promptly put the tissues to good use, "tell me about yourself."

"I'm a rat," Agg said. "I bludgeon people to death, steal their money, and wash the day down with a cappuccino or two. What more do you want to know?"

"Do all rats hate to baths? Do you sleep in hordes? Is it true you can smell blood from five miles away?"

"Are all squirrel brats this inquisitive?" Agg mocked. "The bath thing is only really a problem in my family. I think it's genetic." He brightened. "If you think I'm bad, you should see Grandpa Drak. Just show him a picture of a of a tub and he starts shivering in fright. No, most rats have grown suh-fih-sti-kated."

"And the hordes?"

Agg raised his eyes to the heavens as though pleading for patience. "Don't be ridiculous. Hordes! Really! We're no longer in the medieval ages, for Vulpuz's sake. It's only the traditionalists like Great-Uncle Rottooth that live in hordes nowadays. And do you know how bad those things are for your health?"

"I can imagine," Lucian said faintly.

"Great-Aunt Nan's told me they spend thousands of gold pieces on doctor's visits each year. Good thing they rule their horde, too, or they'd probably have some problems. Honestly. _Hordes..._"

Lucian nodded, passing Agg the second box of tissues. "All right. And the smelling?"

"Let's just say," Agg said haughtily, "my nose is twenty times better than that wretched, puny thing on your face. All rats have wonderful senses of smell. My brother claims he can even smell Gran's croissants from twenty miles away, but I think he might be exaggerating." He sniffed. "That's why soap annoys ordinary rats, even ones that don't have an aversion."

Lucian seemed to be hanging onto every word. "What else can rats do?"

"Well..." said Agg slowly, "I can predict the future, in a sense. At least, I can tell how long you're going to live when I look at you. Except that only works when I've got a club in my hand and you're laying prone in front of me."

"Really?" Lucian said in amazement. "How?"

"I just know it," Agg said. "It's a skill rats are born with."

"What is it?"

"What is what?"

"My life expectancy."

Agg closed his eyes and sneezed again. "No club, see? You ask too many questions. Go away."

Lucian left. But he continued to come back to chat for a few minutes each day whenever he could spare the time. Agg assured himself that he only looked forward to these visits because of the tissues Lucian brought him. His anticipation for Lucian's daily visits certainly had nothing to do with this small amount of company – _woodlander_ company, of all things! – brightening his otherwise lonely and soap-filled existence. No, of course not. The idea was enough to make him vomit. A rat wanting to spend time with a woodlander? _Really!_

Agg did, however, manage to learn some things about Lucian in the weeks that followed. Such as the fact that his father had abandoned Lucian and his mother when the dibbun was only three seasons, leaving his Mum to live off welfare until she got a job at the factory down the road from the abbey (Agg could relate – rats were notorious for having dysfunctional families); how he was too busy to attend school; how the other children made fun of him for his ratty, tattered clothes. Of course, Lucian didn't complain outright. It was more what he didn't say that clued Agg in. Not that Agg was interested in the affairs of a wretched woodlander youngling – oh, no. It was just something to pass the dreary hours between twilight and morning, when he should have been out raiding with his friends.

* * *

**went from being a twoshot to something significantly longer.**


End file.
